Robert Thomas Lego

Robert Lego, who lived a dynamic life full of love, learning, and accomplishment, died on May 29, 2024 at the age of 89.

                Robert, known as Bob, was born in the Mississippi River town of Clinton, Iowa on July 29, 1934 to Ray Lego, a police officer, and Gertrude Judge Lego, who ran a local insurance agency founded by her father.  Bob attended Clinton’s St. Mary’s Catholic High School, where he played on the school’s basketball team and was nicknamed “Hook” because of his skill at the hook shot.  His basketball prowess led to an athletic scholarship at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa but an event occurred in 1952 that changed his life:  he was injured while working at a part-time job and had to have surgery.  

While Bob recovered at the local Clinton hospital, Bernadette Costello visited her father, who was recuperating from a heart attack in the room across the hall from Bob’s.   Bernie had known Bob in high school, but she didn’t like him much because he was a prankster and a year behind her in school.  At the hospital, she stopped into Bob’s room to say hi, and Bob was immediately taken by Bernie’s good looks, winning personality, and poodle skirt, and Bernie found the handsome, smart Bob with that light in his eyes to be much more to her liking than she had found him in high school.  Bob and Bernie began dating.

The injury also cut short Bob’s athletic career, as he was not cleared to play basketball after the surgery.  Although he was disappointed, Bob later said that it was one of the best things that ever happened because it led him to focus on his college studies.   He fell in love with learning, a love that lasted a lifetime.  

Bob joined the Naval Reserves in the early 1950’s and spent two summers in training; the first in Long Beach, California and the second in Newport, Rhode Island.  On September 10, 1955, he married Bernie in Clinton, Iowa and they spent the first night of their one-week honeymoon in a “postage-stamp sized” room at the Palmer Hotel in Chicago, and the remaining days in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.  They would recall later, with a laugh, that they returned to Iowa with only forty-two cents left in their pockets.

Bob graduated from St. Ambrose in 1956 with a bachelor’s degree in political science with a minor in accounting.  Bob then attended law school at the University of Iowa, graduating in 1959.   His first legal job was at the Corps of Army Engineers in Rock Island, Illinois.  Bob worked there seven years, leaving the Corps in 1966 to take a job at the Iowa Department of Transportation in Ames, Iowa, where he staye four years, until 1970.

Those “Iowa years” were among the most rewarding of his life.  Bob loved music and he became an active member and leader of a local barbershop quartet where he sang tenor.  Bob’s personality was gregarious; he loved to be around people and he and Bernie enjoyed an active social life.  They also had a houseful of children.  There were lots of parties and barbecues and softball games in the vacant lot down the street.  Bob installed a small basketball court in the backyard of their Ames, Iowa house, and the children often took shots from a huge stone located several feet off the court. There was great competition as to who was best at making the “rock shot.”

As for those children, Bob and Bernie had six:  Rene, Robbin, Ray, Kerry, Kelly, and Dan.  All but Dan were born in Iowa.  Kelly, the fifth child, was born in April of 1966 with hyaline membrane disease and lived only thirteen days.  Bob told his children many years later that he prayed for Kelly every night before he went to sleep.

Bob’s chance encounter with a lawyer in Omaha in the late 1960s changed the family’s life.  The lawyer, an older man, encouraged Bob and Bernie to take their children on vacations with them, as he noted that children are only with you for a short time.  In 1966, Bob and Bernie became the proud owners of a green Chrysler 300, and in the summer of 1967, Bob and Bernie took that car cross-country to California, where the children had their first experience of Disneyland.  In 1968, they drove to Florida, where they visited Busch Gardens and took a ride on a glass-bottom boat, and in 1969, they traveled to New York City and Montreal, where they climbed to the top of the Statute of Liberty, saw Ann Miller in Mame on Broadway, and watched the moon landing as they crowded around a small TV in a hotel room in Quebec.  These trips had a deep and lasting impact on the family, and all the children to this day have a love for travel and adventure.  As Bob would drive the family on those long car trips, he would dramatically encourage the children to “Grasp it!!!” when he showed them the beauty of the Rocky Mountains,  and to pass the time, he  would engage them with questions about how many freight cars  were on that train that was passing, and how many people were dead in the cemetery we drove by (all of them).  Once, heavy clouds were interfering with the family’s vision of the Rocky Mountains, and Bob yelled out, “Let there be light!” and magically, at that very moment, the sun came out!  

In 1970, Bob moved from government work in Iowa to the private sector in California.  The family moved from Ames, Iowa to Palos Verdes Estates, California.  Bob worked for a property development company, and he loved what he did.  One of the projects he worked on was bringing the London Bridge from England to Lake Havasu City, Arizona.  Another advantage of moving to California was the chance to live near the ocean; ever since his days in Long Beach, Bob was drawn to the sea, and he loved the ocean views from his California home.  Another highlight of those days was the birth of Bob and Bernie’s sixth child and second son, Dan.

Bob loved Elvis and Bob and Bernie took the older kids to see him in Las Vegas in the early 1970’s.  Bob delighted in Elvis walking out on the stage to the dramatic theme music from 2001:   A Space Odyssey.  Not too many people took their young children to a Las Vegas showroom to see Elvis, but Bob and Bernie did.  The kids saw Elvis on more than one occasion, and those are happy memories.

In 1973, Bob was transferred to Phoenix, and then they moved to Denver in 1974.  Bob worked for property development companies in Colorado, one of which was involved in the building of Republic Plaza, the tallest building in Denver.  Bob’s name was on a million-dollar check that the company offered the Duffy’s restaurant to convince it to move.  Duffy’s refused, and the Republic Plaza was built around the restaurant.  Duffy’s framed the check with Bob’s signature and displayed it at the front of the restaurant for years.

The Denver years were happy ones.  Bob and Bernie and the family enjoyed visiting Aspen, where they appreciated the town’s great beauty and sampled the dessert crepes at the often-visited Wagon.  Bob and Bernie loved Hawaii, and they would visit often with their younger children, Kerry and Dan.  Bob also had many work projects in Canada, and Bob, Bernie, Kerry and Dan traveled to Edmonton and Calgary over a few summers, where they attended the famous Calgary Stampede and inevitably took in the latest James Bond movie.  As a member of the American Bar Association, Bob took the family to the bar conventions in London in 1985, and in San Francisco in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  San Francisco was Bob’s favorite city to visit.  A boat ride to Sausalito was always on the itinerary when Bob and family visited the area, as were trips to Candlestick Park to see the Giants play.

In 1990, Bob and Bernie and three of their five children went to Europe.   They drank and ate heartily in Bavaria, drove on the Autobahn, had their car towed because they couldn’t understand a parking sign, went to Paris and got into a fight with a cabdriver, and dined at a beautiful restaurant in France where a French banker and his wife were so impressed by Bob, Bernie and their family that they sent over a bottle of wine.  That led to the outgoing and larger-than-life Bob going over to chat with them.  The Frenchman and his wife invited Bob and Bernie to their home, they all became friends, and within a year, the Frenchman’s daughter came to live in Bob and Bernie’s home, where she enjoyed the Colorado lifestyle for six months before returning home.

Bob loved sports and was a big fan of the Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees, and Notre Dame football team.  All his children attended Colorado State University, and Bob and Bernie and their children all have a deep and abiding love for that school and its football and basketball teams.  Bob’s son, Ray, played for the Rams in the early 1980’s and Bob and Bernie and the family took numerous trips to Fort Collins in the winter and spring to watch him play.  

In the 1990’s, Bob began writing songs and poems.  He wrote a song for the Colorado Rockies, which was featured on a local news program.  He also wrote songs for albums that he produced.  These songs often focused on his parents and memories of his childhood in Iowa. He also wrote poems celebrating birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, and other events, big and small, of day-to-day life and sent them to his children and grandchildren.  His poems were always fun to read, and the recipient felt honored to receive one of his poems on a special day.  A poem from him was to be cherished, and his children and grandchildren saved the many poems he wrote for them.

   Speaking of grandchildren, beginning in 1993, the family grew by the addition of eight beautiful grandchildren:   Robert Judge (“R.J.”), Kelly, Greg, Matt, Kyle, Joe, Katie, and Sophie.  Christmas Eve was absolutely the best at Bob and Bernie’s (Papa and Grandma’s) house.  All the children and grandchildren would gather there, and it was big and boisterous and so much fun.  When the grandchildren were young, Bob and Bernie would send them down to the basement to look for something, and then the doorbell upstairs would ring over and over, and oh!   -- it must be Santa! and they would scramble up the stairs as fast as their little legs would take them.  They would run to the living room, now filled to the brim with brightly wrapped presents.  “Santa has come!  Santa has come!” they would cry and then the opening of the gifts would begin, from youngest grandchild to the oldest, with appropriate time for everybody in the room to oooh and aaahh over every gift before going on to the next child.   Simply put, nobody did Christmas Eve better than Bob and Bernie.  If in doubt, please ask their grandchildren!

Bob and Bernie also celebrated Thanksgivings, Easters, and myriad birthdays and other special occasions at their home with their expanding family, and those were happy events.  Bob had been involved in designing and building the family homes in Ames, Palos Verdes, and Colorado.  The Colorado home, in Cherry Hills, was his favorite and he and Mom took beautiful care of it during the forty years they lived there.

Bob lost Bernie in June of 2002 after nearly forty-seven years of marriage.   Bob took excellent  care of Bernie from the time she was diagnosed with cancer, and she died at home, surrounded by her family.  Her loss left a great void for him and the entire family.

Bob worked hard his entire life.  He was a role model for giving it all both professionally and personally.  After his years working for property development companies, he had his own solo practice, working in real estate, business, and commercial litigation. In 2009, Bob was recognized by the Colorado Bar Association for fifty years of practicing law.  He worked for six more years, retiring in 2015 at 81.  He sold his house and moved to an apartment, where the family continued to gather for birthdays and special occasions.  During his last illness, he talked about the happiness of those “apartment years” too.  He loved to get up in the morning, fix a cup of coffee, and then go into the “music room” where he would listen to some of his favorite songs.  He also read a lot – there were always newspapers and journals and articles around his apartment – as he enjoyed keeping up with politics and current events.  He liked to watch television too – he saw the latest movies on Netflix and he also enjoyed watching documentaries.  He liked the Smithsonian channel and would encourage his children and grandchildren to watch its “Aerial America” series where the physical beauty of the fifty states were featured.  He also enjoyed Columbo, a show he had first watched back in California in the 1970’s, and for the many years of his retirement, Wednesday night was Columbo night where he would rewatch those shows.

Being retired gave Bob opportunities to think and reflect.  Once, he commented that he sometimes thought of moments of serenity in his life.  He said there were moments in Hawaii when he felt serenity:  sitting outside, listening to the live Hawaiian music with Bernie, enjoying the lovely temperatures, the water, the calmness.   Another memory of serenity was when he was a child in Iowa, when he and his older brother John would go to the movies on Saturday afternoon.  All week long, Bob would look forward to that two-block walk to the Parkside Theater, where the movies cost a dime.  There were newsreels, serials, and then the feature.  Sitting there with the popcorn, enjoying the movie and the day:  that was serenity too.

Bob loved words.  Throughout his life, a dictionary was to be found by his side in case he came across a word that he didn’t know or if he was unsure of its precise meaning.  When he bought his first smartphone, that was one of its uses he most enjoyed:  looking up words and songs and information.  He had an innately curious mind.  He was graced with the great gift of retaining his mental faculties to the end of his life, and he would sometimes amaze his family with his sharp wit and eloquence, even as he reached his late eighties.

He thought often of his life back in Iowa.  He had a remarkable memory and could recall details from his childhood as though they happened yesterday, including names of long-ago friends and neighbors.   Bob lost his older brother John in 2014, and Bob continued to talk until his death about John and their adventures as children and young men.  At the apartment, he looked forward to his frequent talks with his younger brother Bill.  One could hear their booming laughter as they talked to each other over the speaker phone about their days back in Iowa.  He also treasured his conversations with his grandson and namesake R.J., who moved to Richmond, Virginia for college and then decided to stay.  Bob and his grandson would talk weekly, and Bob greatly looked forward to those calls.   His grandson Matthew also visited frequently, and they had long, deep talks about life and the world.  His other  grandchildren, Kelly, Joe, Greg,  Kyle, Katie, and Sophie also visited him, and each of them very much enjoyed their special times with “Papa.”

Bob’s daughters visited him in his apartment just about every Saturday, Rene bringing him his weekly groceries, Kerry bringing him lunch, and Robbin delivering any needed medications.  The “girls” will always have happy memories of engaging in long conversations with him, watching college football, debating the merits of various television shows and movies, and just hanging out with him and being together.

Bob had a zest for life.  He loved his family and friends greatly.  He loved life and was sad that he had to leave.  All of us who love him are sad too.  We will miss him tremendously.

Bob is survived by his children, Rene Parish (Matthew), Robbin (Rick Yeager), Ray, Kerry (Russel Murray), and Dan (Ali); eight grandchildren,  Robert Judge (“RJ”) Lego, Kelly Graves, Greg Lego, Matthew Parish, Kyle Yeager, Joe Graves, Katie Yeager, and Sophie Lego; his brother Bill Lego and Bill’s wife, Rene Lego, and numerous nieces and nephews.  Bob was predeceased by his wife Bernie, his brother John, and his daughter Kelly.